Comment 18: Tell Reed the potential link between Fitzgerald' comments and Google appears to be message traffic/intercepts in July 2005, involving Libby's lawyers in Pennsylvania with the Special Prosecutor's office. [Apparent DoJ-Libby-Google connection Click here for details.]

It is unclear whether the DoJ's Google line of questioning was with the intent to provide specific information to personnel outside DoJ, or how Libby et. al may plan to use this information. [More info related to possible Google-DoJ-Libby link.]

We can confirm three things: [1] Concerns with respect to this issue inside Libby's attorney's office; [2] Successful intercepts of communications related to their concerns; [3] Specific concerns inside Libby's PA office over the FBI I drive, and collection/retention methods. NSA has been unable to find the data related to these intercepts because the intercepts were done using methods and equipement NSA cannot decrypt. This is causing some concern inside NSA and the National Security Council. DIA has been tasked to follow-up on the discredited Joint Staff to assist with messaging for a public relations campaign. It appears the White House remains concerned someone inside EOP has used non-standard communication equipment, which they are unable to identify or locate. Various efforts to date have not been succesfful.

We judge the White House document stonewalling -- related to the NSA issue, hearings -- is part of this larger effort to protect the President; however, the White House's problem is that they do not know the extent to which their files have been accessed, or what volume of data has been moved without their knowledge. They know they're flying blind into these NSA hearings -- not knowing what White House data is floating around -- and realize they've been set-up, and are in a no-win situation.

We judge NSA, White House, and Joint Staff are concerned with a communications compromise within their staff, and are unable to determine the link and communication mode. They appear to suspect there is a non-standard communication device being employed, permitting access to White house, NSA, and counsel files without the NSA knowing or being able to detect.

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We can confirm intercepts of message traffic -- which NSA is unable to monitor -- tasking the DoD's Defense Intelligence Agency to assess the public discussion related to the Joint Staff's ongoing rebellion against the Constitution.

It appears a public relations effort is underway to mitigate the damage related to the Joint Staff's credibility problems, and growing dissention within the ranks. The Joint Staff continues to be in rebellion, and the staffes inside DIA are being asked to develop a plan to assess the risks, and formulate an approach to shore up their flagging credibilty.

Will DIA identify the people inside the White House and NSA who have a greater loyaltiy to the Constituution and the President;

Or will Q2 continue doing what it is doing -- attempting to discover the encryptid technologies which NSA personnel use to communicate, but NSA has no ability to intercept;

Will the DIA and/OR NSA determine how the forces inside the NSA and WHite House are communicating and coordinating efforts to protect the Constitution; or will Q2 simply put more pressure on the NSA personnel to make them scream louder?

The White House is unable to determine who inside their staff is leaking this information; and there is a concern within the Joint Staff and NSC that their communications sytems have been penetrated, compromised, and monitored without the NSA being able to determine how this is being done. The ongoing rebellion against the Constitution continues inside the Joint Staff, NSA, White House, and Defense Intelligence Agency.

QUOTE: There have been no search warrants executed and no communication intercepted pursuant to Title III at the direction of the prosecution team during the course of this investigation.ENDQUOTE

This is another way of saying:

1. The prosecution hasn’t specifically directed communication intercepts. Rather, the White House has already done that, and the GCHQ – British Government Communications Headquarters -- may have given us something, but we don’t have to tell you that – because you didn’t explicitly ask whether the NSA and GCHQ exchange information about your ongoing war crimes and unlawful domestic surveillance program, in violation of the lawful and Constitutional FISA.

2., However, if we – the prosecution and good guys trying to protect the Constitution from the heathens like you who have no regard for the rule of law -- have been given something by someone in GCHQ, we may or may not let you know about the ongoing efforts by GCHQ to provide information which may lead us to other evidence we can seize after you have committed perjury and we want to make your life more miserable.

3. We have no obligation to tell you how we found out about the really nasty stuff that the Grand Jury has talked about and may show the President and Vice President have committed high crimes over the unlawful invasion of Iraq, and the ongoing efforts to violation the American Constitution.

4. We make no comment about the GCHQ intercepts that we may or may not have related to the DoJ informants inside the White House, NSA, and DoD who are waiting to surface and show the world you are not fit to be leaders and should lawfully be removed from office.

Behave!

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Added 02 Feb 2006

SOLUTION: This "issue" of what the White House does or does not do with respect to data retention could be solved if Congress had an NSA-like monitoring system, which was directed at the Executive Branch. Congress has the inherent authority through Article 1 Section 8 to promulgate rules and do what it has to do to ensure the laws are followed. If the President has "nothing to hide," why does he resist Congressional efforts to have an NSA-like electronic monitoring system pointed at the Joint Staff, NSA, and DoJ to verify that the "ongoing operations" are consistent with the Constitution and rule of law?

White House counsel is currently going over the statutes, and doing the same as it did with Congress in re NSA and FISA: Creating talking points, spewing out legal non-sense, and trying to show why "what Bush did" is no different than Clinton. Irrelevant: That issue was investigated, as should this situation with Bush and the White House.

Note: See Title 36§ 1234.24 for the well promulgated data retention/management requirements.

Best practices for management of records currently exist in the form of National Archives and Records Administration guidance containedin title 36 of the Code of Federal Regulations [Page 51 of 55]

Sample audit report over data retention: See page 9 of 41 Click here: "E-mail and other Records Retention Issues:"; and Kos has some details on this issue in re Rove. Click

Clearly Promulgated, Constitutional

Archiving requirements is "SHALL" -- but this President ignored that requirement over FISA. See that pattern -- "hay, we have no defense, so let's call the National Archives something that is "a violation of the President's inherent authority to remain above the law. CLickNARA regulations -- enjoy! Small problem: Article 1 Section 8 gives Congress the power to make rules, and confers on Congress to "do what it has to" to ensure the Executive "SHALL" follow the law.

Here's the legal problem for the White House over issue of "lack of backup"

(c) Agencies that maintain their electronic mail records electronically shall move or copy them to a separate electronic recordkeeping system unless their system has the features specified in paragraph (b)(1) of this section.

Legal Trap for the White House: Why RNC's Rove and the White House agenda are in the last throes:

A. Either the White House violated the law when it failed to preserve the data; OR

B. It failed to comply with the law when it ignored the back-up requirements; OR

C. There are two sets of data that have been destroyed.

Fitzgerald is signaling a new issue

We judge the Special Counsel's letter is a signal to Congress: You need to consider this in the matter of NSA, FISA, and statutory compliance: To what extent has there been deliberate destruction of evidence, outside the Plame issue that warrants a special counsel above and beyond what Special Counsel Fitzgerald has been given the charter to review. I suspect despite his capable staff, the volume of legal issues is going through the roof right now.

Senate and House need to review this data management-statutory non-compliance matter in light of NSA and data access, retention, and White House efforts to discredit, silence, and intimidate public discussion of unlawful White House retaliation over Patriot Act, Downing Street Memo, Iraq WMD, and the RNC protestors

The conduct is no different than what we have seen with Rendition, abuse/torture, and CIA detention centers in Eastern Europe: Standard/Statutes/requirements are one thing; and the White House reserves the right to violate that law, issue a "signing statement" and issue specific orders to contractors, government personnel, and other persons to violate the law. This is a pattern of conduct. The President has shown he is in defiance of the law. He refuses to assent to the rule of law, the FISA court, and the Congress. The appropriate remedy is to order the House to vote to investigate this matter, and issue articles of impeachment. If the Congress fails to act, the States are prepared to issue a proclamation so stating. [Don't lose hope: States can force the House to act, bypassing the RNC-Controlled Judiciary Committee Click here how this is done; it's been tested, and is consistent with the house rules/practices/precedent. Deadline for Congress: 01 March 2006, or States will ramp up effort to issue proclamations. Only one is needed. There is nothing the RNC can do to stop this; they are in a no-win situation.]

Congress needs to assess Fitzgerald’s comments in light of a larger pattern of obstruction of Justice, not limited to Plame, but in the context of the cover-up to hide what was or was not going on over the issues with the domestic spying, coordination between DoJ and lobbyists to retaliate; and links between NSA and JTTF over matters of intelligence gathering and sharing information gleaned from NSA intercepts, and used by JTTF as they did in Nebraska to target ACLU over showing of the Patriot Act.

Did the Vice President's staff properly comply with the internal procedures in re: Notification, Examination, and Documentation;

When was the White House staff briefed by the Contractor on these issues;

How was the Primary Contracting Officer briefed on the status of this information;

What impact, if any did the data retention "issues" have with respect to the award fees paid to the Contractor managing this data.

How did the issues with "Enterprise Computing Solutions Technologies, Incorporated" get resolved with Clinton; and did a new contactor get hired under the prime; if so, who oversaw the transition effort from ECST to the new management system; what issues were identified; and how was the White House briefed on the final disposition of the final ready-status?

What agreements, directions, or formal "plans going forward" were presented to the U.S. District Court [July 13, 2000, hearings between July 31 andOctober 3, 2000] that should have been in place, but were not done so contrary to the court's understanding of what was to happen? [See page 21 of 55 Click here]

Backup tapes: Check the common legal arguments Libby-White House uses, as they compare to the auditor Andersen legal defense in re Enron. Why, despite the "big concerns about Enron" did the White House not heed the Security and Exchange Commission's guidance on the document retention "lessons learned" over Anderson?

Also, find out whom in the Certified Fraud Examiner [CFE] community -- those who can do forensic analysis of computer software -- was called into the White House; did they get a timely notification; and who was brought in before the "official" look see; and the nature of the "issues" reported to this CFE.

Compare the actual data retain, and contrast it with the IT-department document retention plan; compare it with the proposed budget plans 2001-2003, to see if there were issued discussed with data warehousing, retention.

You'll see on this breakdown a timeline of the White House data retention problems, look at page 43 of 55, Click here Note the Contractor listed is Northup Grumman. Issue becomes: Has this contractor failed to do something in the contract management effort with today's effort; or did the transition from Northrop Grumman to the "new contractor" [whoever that might be] fail to adequately ensure that the oversight and risk mitigation was sufficient before total contract requirements were transitioned. If the latter is the case, the issue falls back onto the common problem -- Contract management problems, a problem not unfamiliar to Special Operations Command as evidenced by this Analysis of the Lincoln Group's contract problems.

For a detailed breakdown of the steps involved in a CFE effort to review the White House e-mail, check pages 44 of 55 of this report click here. The question becomes: Did the White House, when it knew of the problems with the Vice President's e-mail retention adequately act as it should have; if it did not, how can it explain its failure to heed the lessons of the Clinton Administration. Note: Data retention requirements/statutes do not change with Administration changes; it needs to be understood why significant effort/lessons/other corporate knowledge/industry experience with the White House IT systems was or was not adequately preserved, used, applied, or otherwise put into practice to comply with their clearly promulgated IT data retention requirements.

Consider the lessons learned over the Clinton data-retention issues, and the offsite storage location in the locations off-site from the primary storage area. There's an area north in Bethesda, possibly connected to a NASA research facility where the backup information is retained. This is outside the White House direct control. Would be useful to compare the data files turned over to the Special Prosecutor, with this back-up information.

For a sample of the Contract specifications related to backup information and archiving, check the Raw Story's contract related to Lincoln Group. You'll find specific line items detailing how the information is to be stored, who has access. The issue will be to see who is on contact to provide this service to the White House, and what oversight-investigation was done consistent with the contract management requirements: Who specifically reviewed the contract for the White House data retention; and what direct communications occurred from the contracting office to the specific White House IT personnel to review the matter; and were the notifications and responses consistent with the contract requirements.

Power bloggers: Check the common legal connections in Pennsylvania between Libby's attorneys and John Yoo, the former DoJ Attorney.

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We can confirm intercepted message traffic -- outside American, DoJ prosecutor office control -- in early July 2005 from Libby's lawyer over concerns related to the FBI I-drive retention problems. More

If you want to do something about this, there is something you as an individual blogger can do: All you have to do is share this link with your friends. It is a plan to mobilize your friends in your neighborhood to call attention to the NSA hearings. Your State officials need to watch. This explains why. [ Click here]